Strengthening Organisational Memory Through Incident Reporting

Patient safety incidents do not need to spell failure on the part of those involved. Instead, these incidents can act as priceless resources for improving organisational memory.

Not enough can be said of learning from one’s own mistakes.

While learning from the mistakes of others is valuable, avoiding the temptations of pointing blame and assigning punishment can be nearly impossible without the proper tools. In the case of medical errors, integrated patient safety systems help, and when those systems place an emphasis on concise incident reporting to reveal underlying causes, they can strengthen an organisation’s memory to the point that future incidents are remedied well before their potential consequences.

Keeping Staff Competent and Cooperative

Healthcare organisations are only as strong as the people, technology, and systems that support them. If any of these falter, then the rest usually follows behind. However, by setting up an internal system designed to simplify processes and keep the focus away from harmful distractions, healthcare organisations can ensure that their staff remain competent and cooperative, especially while brainstorming patient safety incidents.

Incident reporting not only directs attention to the matter at hand, but also provides a portal through which information can be easily shared, recorded, and evaluated. This process of continuous feedback and improvement allows healthcare providers to learn from events without the tedium of extracurricular efforts: it is the simple cycle of the incident reporting process itself that instills information and builds a sense of unity among those involved.

Highlighting Areas of Improvement and Opportunities for Further Training

Organisations, like people, must learn from the things that go wrong to improve. Through incident reporting, areas of improvement are easily highlighted, showing organisational leaders where to place emphasis on new training techniques, more efficient equipment and technology, and other similar adjustments.

Creating an environment that values learning as a way of improving functionality is the only way to guarantee the success of these endeavors, and incident reporting helps motivate organisations to embrace change at every level to garner more actionable and reliable results.

Training should never a punishment, but rather an opportunity to learn modernised approaches for dealing with new demands and concerns. Training is most effective when performed with a top-down approach. This allows organisational leaders to pass their information to the employees they manage and communicate with directly – strengthening relationships and cooperation without becoming blinded by interdepartmental rankings.

Patient safety incidents should be avoided at all costs, but their occurrence do not need to spell failure on the part of those involved. Instead, these incidents can act as priceless resources for improving organizational memory to better handle future cases.